The Medici Letters: The Secret Origins of the Renaissance by Taylor Buck

A shocking ancient secret.
The origins of western civilization discovered.

The Renaissance—our most fundamental age of technological and artistic advance, was built upon a secret passed down to a banking family in Florence—the Medici.

500 years ago that secret was buried.

Florence, Italy, present day. A trove of letters belonging to the Medici family is discovered underground. Archaeologist Kat Cullen comes across a map that leads her to the Swiss Alps where she is later found unconscious and her partner murdered. Kat’s husband, professor and classicist—Jack Cullen, rushes to investigate. He joins with Chester Allen, a brilliant scientist from surveillance enterprise TerraTEK Industries, and together they begin to unravel the mystery of the Medici letters in hopes of determining what happened in the Alps. As they dig deeper, Jack stumbles across a secret—the infamous Medici treasure is real. However, word gets out and Jack soon realizes he’s not the only one interested in finding it…a deadly and elusive assassin attempts to seize control, throwing Jack into a series of harrowing escapades—riding horseback through the streets of Siena, discovering clues inside ancient cathedrals, deciphering 500 year-old cryptosystems and navigating an underground labyrinth in order to solve a secret so powerful it could change the world forever.

This fast-paced adventure blends together a modern-day treasure hunt with historic accounts of Lorenzo de’Medici in Renaissance Florence in an international thriller with plenty of dark twists and exciting turns.